Reports suggest that the labour market in the UK continues to get stronger and stronger, with job vacancies reaching another record high in the quarter from December 2021 to February 2022.

While this is clearly great news for job seekers, it means recruitment into key roles is proving to be a challenge for many businesses and is certainly a theme we’re hearing from many of our clients.

We’re all used to temporarily picking up the slack when the recruitment of a new team member doesn’t perfectly overlap with the departure of another. Comms and marketing teams across the board, but particularly in the NHS, are almost always stretched quite thinly, and even a delay of a couple of weeks in filling a vacancy can have a big impact. What can you do if you’re finding it difficult to keep calm and carry on with a longer-term resource gap in your team? Here are our top suggestions.

Option 1: Prioritise and scale back

Nobody wants to do this but, faced with a person-shaped hole in your already busy comms team, you may have to consider what really must be done and what can perhaps be put on the shelf – for now at least.

Let’s say you’re preparing for a conference or other big event. It’s extremely unlikely that you can drop any of the steps involved, so maybe you need to look at whether any of your day-to-day tasks can be simplified or scaled back. If you write and produce a newsletter, for example, could you reduce the number of pages or stories, or temporarily reduce the frequency?

Similarly, it might be helpful to look back at any historic content that could be refreshed or repurposed more easily than writing something new. Perhaps you have some blogs from a few years ago that are still relevant and could be shared again with a little light editing, or a report that could be cut up into several stories or articles? Doing this could mean you’re still able to put out relevant content with minimal time and effort.

Option 2: Get help from within

If your organisation isn’t prepared to accept a change in the output of your team, you may have a good case for creating a short-term secondment for someone within your business. Secondments can be a great way to fill a gap in a team and they’re also a fantastic opportunity for someone from another part of the organisation or a junior colleague with an interest in communications to gain some valuable experience.

Granted, they may not be able to offer you the same support as an experienced comms pro, but they could take the pressure off the rest of the team and help you to keep things ticking over. Good tasks to pass to a less experienced colleague include doing research into topics, team admin and more straightforward writing projects like simple email bulletins and social media posts.

Option 3: Look outside your organisation for support

Another option that some organisations turn to is outside support from an agency, freelancer, or contractor. This allows you to tap into the benefits that come from working with someone who has extensive comms experience while you wait to find your perfect permanent hire. However, this route isn’t without its pitfalls. A good freelancer may be hard to find at short notice and agencies can often expect a guaranteed amount of work or length of contract.

At Sorted Communications, our fully remote team works closely together and our flexible hours allow us to react quickly and efficiently to our clients’ needs. We regularly pick up work at short notice and have already supported clients this year while they worked to fill vacancies in their teams. We’re always happy to step in and find a way to make our clients’ lives a little bit easier – whether that’s by writing blog posts, case studies or newsletters, managing a publication project such as an annual report, or simply providing an extra pair of hands to pick up those random tasks that end up with the comms team because no-one else knows what to do with them!

Mix and match

Of course, these options aren’t mutually exclusive and sometimes a combination of the three can work really well. You may find that you can delay or scale back a particular campaign, get some help in the office from another team and outsource a project to an agency so that you go on to deliver more or less everything in your plan without losing all of your hair!

If you’re wondering whether outsourcing could work for you, some of our other blogs have advice and tips on working with an external supplier, or to find out more contact us today for a no-obligation chat. We can help get your communications sorted.